The Cnidarian Tree of Life Project

Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Universidad de los Andes

Octocoral Systematics

My collaboration with CniToL concerns intrageneric and closely-related species phylogeny of octocorals mainly and a few groups of corals and black corals. In my lab, we are studying the evolution of RNA secondary structures and their applications in molecular systematics. We also combine/validate molecular results with morphological analyses from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of calcareous structures (e.g. sclerites) and nematocysts.